The Fondazione Baruchello, on October 20, 2022, opens the exhibition “Opening History,” a project that stems from the archive of the newspaper “la Repubblica,” which became part of the Foundation’s Library in 2009.
The exhibition, which is presented as a research work, reflects on the adjacencies between the mass media universe of communication proposed by a newspaper and the reflection that artists of different backgrounds and training have dedicated to history. Loose and bound copies, front pages and details of the newspaper narrate an era that extends from 1976 to the present. Alongside this narrative of facts and contexts, a series of artists’ films have been selected through which the roots of the mass media construction of facts are investigated, the gaps and censorships in the narrative are addressed, parallel gazes are enacted that do not neglect memory and affect, and the cultural systems underlying the telling of history are problematized.
Films by Chantal Akerman, Gianfranco Baruchello, Harun Farocki, Antoni Muntadas, Rogelio López Cuenca, Dora García, Cesare Pietroiusti and others, presented through a program of screenings, build a landscape within which history appears as a system that can reveal its own fragility.
A calendar of meetings, reading workshops, and interventions, starting Oct. 20, provide the opportunity to explore the exhibition’s themes through different perspectives.
Given the huge amount of materials that make up the collection of “la Repubblica” (about 17 thousand copies), a preparatory phase for the exhibition consists of an initial workshop during which issues and related years of the newspaper will be organized and selected. This workshop is also presented as an opportunity for multi-voice reflection preliminary to the exhibition.